<p>Special college issue includes the interesting article "Academic Business" by Andrew del Banco, director of American studies and Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, that asks "Has the modern university become just another corporation?". </p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/</a></p>
<p>^"Has the modern university become just another corporation?"</p>
<p>LOL. are you in America?
Food, clothing, shelter, recreation, transportation, religion, and government -
corporations all.</p>
<p>Hifi, there is a pretty compelling history of academia that shows it operates/operated quite differently than corporations. Unfortunately, and I say this before reading these articles because I've already done significant research into this area (and will be reading the articles in a few moments), the truth is the differences between academia and corporations is slimming and this is a travesty, especially for AAU-type colleges.</p>
<p>I just finished the "Application" article. My oh my, there's a lot to be learned from that one!!</p>
<p>Just bumping this up to suggest that you might want to go out and buy a copy of today's NY Times - the whole magazine section is devoted to their annual College Issue. And yes, as mentioned, CC is in there, too!</p>
<p>I've really been enjoying it. I loved the "On Language" section. Adultalesence and adorkable are being added to my vocabulary! I thought the Ethicist was 100% wrong on whether it was ethical to take Adderal (when you aren't ADD) for the SAT. The Olin article was interesting - especially the last sentence where they said kids loved their Olin experience, but then found work less fulfilling - so much so that many don't stick with engineering. (Mind you tons of MIT engineers seem to end up in finance.)</p>
<p>I enjoyed the Language article too, though some of these words have been around for quite a while (my kids have been saying "sketchy" since HS, at least.) And I've heard the Captain Obvious and Captain everything else comments for years now, too. Plus, can't believe he really couldn't figure out what "hallcest" means.</p>
<p>I really liked adorkable, though. Hadn't heard that one yet.</p>
<p>The admissions article felt like one I'd read a thousand times before. You can usually read between the lines and realize the stories aren't so astonishing as they seem (like that kid Win--whatever happened that caused him to leave the private school seemed likely to affect his admissions, to me.)</p>
<p>But I am continually surprised by what kids and families in communities like Bronxville will do to try to get themselves into colleges. I'm again reminded that our rough n ready school system probably honed my kids in a more natural way than these hothouse places; even though I am sure there are a lot of things they missed out on (all kinds of advanced classes, summer programs, etc) they developed into themselves in a genuine way which sounds like it was much less stressful. Those kids in the article just sounded so tired!</p>